Reco - Reporting in Construction

The construction industry accounts for a large fraction of the total environmental impact throughout its whole value chain – from the initial raw materials to the final demolition.

Business transparency is a salient aspect in order to reach moreresponsible and sustainable business operations. In 2017, Sweden enacted a newlegislation, making Sustainability Reporting mandatory for larger companiesbased on turnover, balance and employee number, which affects merely about0.2% of all Swedish companies. As 87% of all construction companies have belowfive employees, this only affects a small fraction of the construction industry.

Therefore, RECO was founded to target these smaller companies, which togethermake up for a huge amount of the total harmful effects caused by theconstruction industry. In addition to the environmental challenges, the industryalso has social aspects with room for substantial improvements, both bypreventing illicit working and improving work conditions.

With support from SSE researcher Emilia Cederberg and representatives from SEBand Handelsbanken, a template was created to support and encourage smallconstruction firms to sustainability report. This includes both an introduction withinformation of what the report aims to do and benefits gained from it, astakeholder and essentiality analysis and lastly the final report. The template hasbeen delivered to several firms that consider using it for their next annual reports.Through RECO, we increase the knowledge and awareness of sustainablereporting, and thus primarily target SDG 7, 8 and 12.